Category: Treasures of Napoli

The San Giovanni a Carbonara Church in Naples, Italy is a little known wonder. A well preserved Gothic church of the Angevin monarchy, it is home to King Ladislao’s tomb and a Sanfelice double staircase.

Like a vanishing point, looking into the gallery on the second floor of the Capodimonte Museum, the work of Michele Merisi, aka Caravaggio, reveals, like a prodigious optical instrument, the intricate themes and ideas of Naples in the 17th century.

A work in progress, this site will have you crouching on your knees, your hands searching for a toe hold on walls carved some 2400 years ago. And it will leave you with the sensation that you’ve crawled down Alice’s rabbit hole into the bowels of ancient history and into a place so intimate, so sacred, that only the most callous observers will escape unscathed.

Naples treasures are large and small. Tucked away and hidden in plain sight. Original masterpieces and facsimiles thereof. Or in this case, it’s not what it is, but what it was thought to be. The tomb of Publius Vergilius Maro (70 BC – 19 BC), known to most simply as Virgil or Vergil.